


Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind

by all_aboard_the_ss_brucenat



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom, The Incredible Hulk (2008), The Incredible Hulk (TV)
Genre: Bruce Banner Angst, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Bruce Banner Week 2018, Bruce Banner-centric, Bruce Week, Bruce Week 2018, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Hulk-induced Amnesia, Mutant Bruce Banner, POV Bruce Banner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 10:31:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16093853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_aboard_the_ss_brucenat/pseuds/all_aboard_the_ss_brucenat
Summary: Bruce deals with the aftermath of his first-ever transformation.





	Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind

The sun was bright. Bruce’s head pounded as he blinked, trying to make sense of everything. He screwed his eyes shut, but the noise was overwhelming. There were voices everywhere. Police sirens blared. It was cold, too. Bruce noticed that he was shivering. He opened his eyes again, looking at his bare chest.

_Everything was on fire. People ran from him, screaming. It was all too much. He had felt powerful, invincible. Almost primal. But when they screamed, he could hear her voice._

Suddenly, it all came rushing back. Bruce remembered sitting in the machine, feeling so certain that he had figured it all out. He worked for General Thaddeus Ross, seasoned army general. He had been assigned to work on radiation resistance. He had thought Gamma radiation was the key. Earlier in the lab, he had thought the product would make him invincible to radiation. He was supposed to create the solution to Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima, and Nagasaki. And he had truly thought he had done it. But after turning on the machine, nothing. Everything blurred and dimmed. He racked his memory, trying to figure out what had happened since then.

_He stepped back, covering his ears and cowering. The bullets kept hitting him, but they didn’t break him. He didn’t break. But they stung like hellfire._

Bruce finally gathered the strength to sit up in the snow. He looked around and saw three men standing above him, wearing black parkas with police badges, broad hats, and gun holsters. 

“Sir, you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent and to refuse to answer questions. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney before speaking to the police and to have an attorney present during questioning now or in the future. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish. If you decide to answer questions now without an attorney present, you will still have the right to stop answering at any time until you talk to an attorney,” the tallest one said. 

Bruce looked around and recognized the ruins of his lab in Arlington, Virginia. It had been destroyed. Parts were on fire, and other parts looked as if they had simply been torn to pieces with a sledgehammer. The demolished area was surrounded by police cars and ambulances. Bruce saw a body being carried away on a stretcher.

_The woman was screaming. “LEAVE ME ALONE,” he roared. Why wouldn’t they stop making so much noise? He grabbed something and threw it at her. He heard the glass shatter as it hit her. That only made her scream louder. It was too much. Everything was too much._

Bruce paled as he put two and two together. He clenched his fists as he tried not to vomit. In a flash, he got to his feet and stumbled towards the stretcher in the ice. “Betty!” he cried hoarsely. His voice was quiet and raspy. Amidst the screaming and police sirens, it was almost inaudible. He took a deep breath and tried again. “BETTY!” The shorter police officer with the handlebar mustache grabbed his wrist forcefully.

“You are in custody, Dr. Banner. Several people are dead, and the blame for that lays at your feet. I don’t know who Betty is, but you need to settle down.” The third police officer grabbed Bruce’s shoulders while the mustached officer put him in handcuffs.

Bruce looked at the stretcher again, and recognized Betty’s long face and tousled dark hair. She was clearly unconscious. Bruce remembered throwing that beaker at her. He didn’t know how he had done it or what had happened, but he knew that it was his fault. No one else sounded like her. That scream was unmistakable.

“You have been charged with voluntary manslaughter. The details haven’t been worked out yet, but it’s likely that your sentence will consist of anywhere from 14 to 16 months of solitary confinement. Do you wish to consult an attorney?”

“No,” Bruce croaked, wringing his cuffed hands behind his back. He looked down and saw blood staining the snow beneath his feet. “Do what you will with me.” He was overwhelmed, but there was one fact that he could not deny: he knew that he had struck Betty. And for that, he deserved whatever punishment was coming for him.

The men shoved Bruce into the back of a police car. As he sat, enclosed in the small, but warm space, another memory resurfaced. He recalled his father, a stern man with thick glasses and a deeply furrowed brow. Monster, he had said. No child should have been able to create that. Mutant. Had his father recognized what lurked inside of him? Bruce’s muddled memories of anger and broken glass and screams seemed no different from the horrors that had just passed inside the laboratory. But this time, he had fought back.

When Bruce arrived at the prison, a couple of armed prison guards stood watching while he was stripped of his torn pants and put in an orange jumpsuit. Then he was shoved into a windowless grey cell with a small bed and a toilet in the corner. He stared at the wall for a few minutes until he heard a familiar voice.

“You’ll be glad to know that Betty is recovering,” General Ross said. “No thanks to you. Fortunately, your little accident has progressed the Bio-Tech Force Enhancement Project. Or, should I say, Project Rebirth. That wasn’t radiation resistance you were working on- it was Erskine’s fabled serum.”

“Are you here to gloat, General?” Bruce asked tonelessly. He was sitting on the floor, knees hugged to his chest, facing the opposite wall of the cell.

General Ross used a key to unlock the cell. He put a collar around Bruce’s neck. “This is a mutant inhibitor collar. That means that your little temper tantrum won’t happen again. But we still have plenty of use for you.” The white-haired man locked the cell once more, then strode purposefully out of the hallway.

Bruce rubbed the collar. It was cold and metallic. He tugged on it, but it wouldn’t come off. He had heard about mutants in the news. He thought again of Dad’s words. How had his father known? He looked at his now bare wrist that had worn a wristwatch only hours earlier. It had to be early evening by now. Apparently his watch had been destroyed, just like the rest of his clothing. Bruce remembered sitting in the gamma reactor, then feeling as if he was exploding as his body was pummeled with gamma radiation. He remembered throbbing pain and the sound of shredding, but he had only seen green when it happened. As Bruce racked his memories, still trying to concoct some sort of narrative to follow, he realized that he was getting sleepy. He curled up in the threadbare blanket and surrendered to oblivion.

He dreamed about General Ross’s smirking face growing larger and greener until it fragmented into dust. Then he heard Ross’s words once more: “We still have plenty of use for you.” Bruce finally realized that Ross intended to weaponize Bruce’s research in one way or another. He knew that he had to escape somehow. But the greatest weapon he had seemed to somehow reside in his flesh. He knew now that he hadn’t been protected by radiation resistance at all. Whatever it was that had enabled him to survive the gamma exposure had made him capable of astonishing violence that he was somehow barely conscious of. He wondered if Ross meant to replicate the bastardized version of Erskine’s serum that he had completed. If Ross truly intended that, then he needed to get out of the cell before he could be used to hurt anyone else. Bruce asked for a pencil and paper from the prison guard, and his request was shortly granted. Then Banner began doing what he did best: solving puzzles.

Bruce eventually figured out a way to deactivate the collar, using the electrical current from the light bulb and using the bed frame as conducting wire. Bruce grimaced as he closed the circuit. The metal collar burned his neck as it overheated. But as it deactivated, Bruce felt muscles tense as if his whole body was on fire. He screamed as his vision swam and the world turned green. In a remarkable display of the second law of thermodynamics, Bruce’s prison splintered like a matchbox as his body succumbed to utter chaos.


End file.
